Age of Conan: Ellingson Interview

Stradden · August 2008

At Comic Con San Diego, MMORPG.com Managing Editor Jon Wood caught up with Funcom's Erling Ellingson to talk about the game since launch and the direction for the future.

Comic Con Funcom Interview

At Comic Con, MMORPG.com caught up with Erling Ellingson, the Product Manager for Funcom's Age of Conan.

actionfitz · August 2008

good job putting some of the more difficult questions to him - even if he did squirm his way around some of them.

cheers.

Terranah · August 2008

The guy conducting the interview did a very good job. Usually interviewers throw these guys a bunch of softballs.

octa · August 2008

Fantastic questions from the interviewer. It's unfortunate he didn't follow up with Erling's replies though, he basically flat out lied on so many things. PvP experience was not a "big feature" for launch? WHAT?

I'm fuming right now. What a terrible terrible company.

Doven · August 2008

hello.

Jon,

Excellent job with the facilitation of tough questions.. I myself would have ripped him a new one. Its a very delicate skill to "milk" at the very least a decent response to a hard question, and the questions you asked were spot on and well managed. cheers .

Erling,

YOU should be friggin embarrased my fail friend. Its one thing to be a paid fanboy of failcom, but its completely different to stand up to personal professional ETHICS and at the very least ADMIT there was some serious "unplanned" issues. By that I feel that even if funcom has lost the respect of MANY mmo vets and even new players introduced by this rabble, some sort of admiration for HONESTY would help to possibly turniquet this gaping gash of dignity. YOU lied. I congratulate you on your ability to twist and squirm out of some admirable questions of which you had a chance to redeem your name as well funcoms. Dissapointing, much like your and funcoms excuse to make money.

ps. I was in your beta, and to be quite honest, your "miracle patch" did little more than make an already craptacular game that was unplayable to marginally playable at BEST. As for high end content, sieges, DX10, voice dialog past Tartage and on and on.... you should be ashamed. And this is coming from a player that was IN your AO beta and participated (or tried to , couldnt even MOVE first day) release of Anarcy online. Back then folks were forgiving, or did you forget you had to shut down the game and offer free sub times later on to recover. This market is unforgiving and it will cost funcom a hella lot more time and resources to recover from your embarrasment than if you would have simply done it right the FIRST time.

or at least man'd up and took some responsibility for what will become another SOE dead game.

done

d

yeah im angry, my appologies if anyone other than Erling/Funcom is offended.

sigamon · August 2008

BURN EM ALL!!

mylin1 · August 2008

Hardly think they are a terrible company - terrible companies dont even try and address their game issues - there are problems with AoC but nothing that cannot be fixed - its not like they set out to steal money from children or something... people need to take a deep breath or go for a walk or something.

from release to now the game has had huge content fixes, which shows imho that they are serious about addressing the primary concerns of their players - and what company wouldnt be?

all the big mmo's had rough releases (appart from lotro maybe) but there is still a lot of fun to be had in AoC and I'm sure it will get better as time goes on

am i a fan of all these companies releasing without the polish we want, no Its been a disturbing trend but its been going on in software dev for a very long time, release, patch, patch the patch..

heck on release we called everquest2 everpatch2, it was down more than conan has ever been - but after 4 years that game as a good solid base of people who love it..

wow was the same, server crashing, quests bugged, nothing to do at 50 etc etc

if you get upset by the raw game off the shelf then do yourself a favour and wait 6-12 mnths from release before trying a game.

Although I dont play conan atm (im waiting another few mnths of patchs before i resub) funcom is not the criminal outfit, evil empire that some people are bemoaning.

Grats to the interviewer too, they were really great questions!

jaxsundane · August 2008

Originally posted by mylin1

Hardly think they are a terrible company - terrible companies dont even try and address their game issues - there are problems with AoC but nothing that cannot be fixed - its not like they set out to steal money from children or something... people need to take a deep breath or go for a walk or something.
This is at least debatable because as I hear it the answers were mostly sugar coated as mentioned above not answered honestly or directly-sir I'm certain they set out to sell as many of these game boxes as they could including to children and I'm fairly certain there are children who have them...people need to demand a better end product for goods they pay for .
from release to now the game has had huge content fixes, which shows imho that they are serious about addressing the primary concerns of their players - and what company wouldnt be?
Fromrelease to now it also seems to have had lot's of added bugs stealth nerfs and an overall strategy that has not pleased most of the people who play the game and it's also debatable if they are in fact addressing players primary concerns becuase there own forums seem to point otherwise.
all the big mmo's had rough releases (appart from lotro maybe) but there is still a lot of fun to be had in AoC and I'm sure it will get better as time goes on
Ok Vanguard horrible realese and it's suffering as it should LOTRO wonderful release and is doing fairly well and in fact is a joy to play and runs smoothly by my experienceand the last two I can recall before them are COH/COV by my experience a pretty smooth release of course every game will have some bugs but there needs to be an acceptable standard which is lowered by some of your viewpoints though you are entitled to them no matter what and I want toalso mention WoW's relase I often hear those who want to tear it down say it had a horrible release when the worse thing about it was the wait times before they had enough servers so in conclusion another decent launch.
am i a fan of all these companies releasing without the polish we want, no Its been a disturbing trend but its been going on in software dev for a very long time, release, patch, patch the patch..
I've pointed out in my last reply why I think this is a mostly moot point as all these companies amount to two SOE and FunCom
heck on release we called everquest2 everpatch2, it was down more than conan has ever been - but after 4 years that game as a good solid base of people who love it..
And do you notice a pattern? SOE who has a pretty bad reputation with MMO gamers is the other company you can name that has the resources and every reason not to come out with a horribly borken obivously beta game but does it anyway
wow was the same, server crashing, quests bugged, nothing to do at 50 etc etc
I played it from launch I won't say you are wrong but will challenge you to compare the content WoW offered in it's as you say broken state to what is available working and apparent in AoC

if you get upset by the raw game off the shelf then do yourself a favour and wait 6-12 mnths from release before trying a game.
Or do as I hope more will do stand up shout and demand that these companies not treat your entertainment dollar as any less valuable than the movies they through hundreds of millions of dollars at.

Although I dont play conan atm (im waiting another few mnths of patchs before i resub) funcom is not the criminal outfit, evil empire that some people are bemoaning.
I lean towards your view here I don't think they are an overtly criminal outfit I do think they try to b.s. their customers and themselves though and think that if people looked at things logically they'd see how similar this scenario is to Anarchy onlines launch and realize this company needs better management as does SOE.

Grats to the interviewer too, they were really great questions!

mike470 · August 2008

Well done Stradden! You asked those tough questions that had to be asked.

Mabye this will stop the people who think MMORPG.com is getting paid by Funcom..?

Flummoxed · August 2008

Originally posted by mylin1

Hardly think they are a terrible company ...

It's the apologists for mediocrity and deceit who perpetuate the problem.

thamighty213 · August 2008

Question should have been how much did you make from selling your stock during the pre-release hype and buying it back after a failed launch and before the fanboi's start just because a server stayed up does not make it a good launch releasing without half the features on the box is a failed launch not retaining even 50% of subs after the first month is a failed launch especially during this barren MMO period.

coffee · August 2008

The best question is the last question about removing blood, nipples to get a lower rating. He said no but at the end he sneaked in "maybe in the future" LOL.

checkthis500 · August 2008

Does this guy remind anyone else of this orange alien from ATHF???:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTk4MaygZ0c

Tenebrion · August 2008

Great interview. The person conducting the interview didn't shrink away from asking some tough questions. It's just too bad that the fat dangle wang shrunk away from giving honest answers.

It's interviews like these that really highlight why alot of people are leaving the game in droves, and why alot of people hate Failcom right now. Failcom specializes in developing hype instead of developing content. I've followed the game for about two years, but after seeing the featureless turd that they unleashed in the public, I'm glad that Age of Conan is failing hard.

Friday, I did a search for people in Kheshetta. At 9 p.m., there were exactly 3 people out there. Good game, Vanguard 2.

rubico · August 2008

Nice interview Mr. Lieling Lielingson, you know sh*t about your game, Howard is spining in his grave.

Bayeux · August 2008

Well, I am playing AoC in 3 different servers...8 different characters.

I signed up for another 3 months and so did most of the guys in my guild (32 of them).

Overall, I have found the game to be a lot better than WoW and EVE Online and I am happy to play it.

Note that I realize that the Siege part has to be fixed and that they need to implement the newly proposed PvP system (currently running in Testlive) BUT AoC is still light-years ahead of any other 'true PvP' game out there SO I feel that it is still worth the investment...

docminus · August 2008

The reference by the guy to WoW launch is out of line imho!

Nowadays players don't accept "every MMO is not ready at launch". Some minor things perhaps, yes, but not a beta. The days of EQ1/2, UO, Wow, etc are over, where the excitement alone outweighed the bugs. Today there are enough choices to fall back to. Maybe not perfect ones, but polished ones.

Unfortunately most companies still don't get it, and when they loose subscribers, they are like "dooh? what is wrong with them, we are fixing stuff?".

If WAR will do a Vanguard or AoC, they will die, and I think they know that, so they are sure as heck making sure they will at least have a stable, polished and content rich game until launch (well, at least I hope so).

Arthousesig · August 2008

The funniest thign is you can't write anything critical on the EU forum

Censorship has gone out of control, Tahitoa deletes posts, moves post to off-topic or locks threads that criticise the game just a bit too well, exposing the fact that it's a broken, buggy mess with no content, no class balance and no stats or items that work properly.

And it has become clear Funcom can't fix the broken code as they release patches that make the game even buggier and less stable, while ignoring all the content problems and ignoring all player feedback.

http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/5521/erlingellingsonfuncomre9.jpg

is what I think of Funcom's responses in that interview

Caldicot · August 2008

Wonder if Stradden got Funcom'd

SagaBoy · August 2008

I actually felt bad for poor Erling. To me Erling was like one of those actors that knows a movie is really bad, but still has to act in it. Even when they fully realize how bad the movie is, they are under contract and simply must finish. Watch pretty much any movie by Casper Van Dien if you wish to bare witness to what I'm talking about, but I digress. I found myself crying for Erling. He just seemed like a victim in that interview. I mean a stuttering supervisor, has to now elaborate on why his/her product is so god aweful.

A pity filled pat on the back to Erling and kudos to the mmporg interviewer for actually asking questions of substance.

cyann · August 2008

Poor guy, if he got honour he have to feel awful. Any words in defence of AoC it is joke. Game sux at all. Engine, content, design of gears/weapons, banks and post, ,,,,,,,, , Why even i started? There is no reason to play AoC. I stayed in game over 2 months due guild, now we leaving, guild not single persons.

I saw many Scandinavians on my server, they defending AoC also, funny guys, or silly maybe ?

I feel very bad about my words on TCoS forum, it was not especially clever.

At moment we preparing for WAR, it is impossible to make more bugged game. But i see another difference, I am sure devs of WAR going make playable game. FC was going just make some mmorpg, it was fault, They should stick to single player games. MMORPG need competence, FC recruited people from cleaning service i see. I am sure it is truth if we talking to some GM, they even do not know how to use console or check u character, perfectly incompetentive persons, go back to mop.

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Age of Conan: Ellingson Interview

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